From this week’s NME, classified section, listed under ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The Trustee in Bankruptcy of Andrew Michael Rouke (formerly of “The Smiths”) wishes to sell Mr Rourke’s royalty stream. Any interested party should contact Joey Byrne, Turner Parkinson Solicitors… Manchester.
Wow. Rourke (and drummer Mike Joyce) might have won that 1998 court case when the judge memorably branded Morrissey “devious, truculent and unreliable”, but I guess it wasn’t enough to keep the wolf from the door.
Although what Rob says is pretty accurate, it’s not quite true that no one in the US “gets” Ali G, as this article from the NY Times demonstrates. (You’ll have to register with them to read this, but registration is free). It includes the following transcript of some of Ali G’s interview with James Baker (former US secretary of state):
YOUNG MAN: Isn’t there a real danger that someone give a message over the radio to one of them fighter pilots, saying, ‘Bomb Ira–‘ and the geezer doesn’t heard it properly and bombs Iran instead of Iraq?
MR. BAKER: No danger.
YOUNG MAN: How does you make countries do stuff you want?
MR. BAKER: Well, the way you deal with countries on foreign policy issues… is you deal with carrots and sticks.
YOUNG MAN: But what country is gonna want carrots, even if it’s like a million tons of carrots that you’re giving over there–
MR. BAKER: Well, carrots – I’m not using the term literally. You might send foreign aid – money, money.
YOUNG MAN: Well, money’s better than carrots. Even if a country love carrots and that is, like, their favorite national food, if they get given them–
MR. BAKER: Well, don’t get hung up on carrots. That’s just a figure of speech.
YOUNG MAN: So would you ever send carrots? You know, is there any situation–
MR. BAKER: No, no.
YOUNG MAN: What about if there was a famine?
MR. BAKER: Carrots, themselves? No.
I watched “The Day Britain Stopped” last night. A “documentary-style drama” set in the future describing the events of a particular day in December 2003, when Britain comes to a standstill, and death and destruction ensues. It all starts fairly innocuously – but then a sequence of what would, individually, be serious, but relatively minor, events combine to create something much worse. A train strike pushes more traffic onto the roads; a couple of accidents gridlock the M25 leading to the (unprecedented) closure of the motorway; air traffic controllers can’t get to work to replace the staff currently on their shifts. Then someone makes a mistake at NATS in West Drayton, and there’s a mid-air collision between a passenger plane taking off at Heathrow, and a cargo plane landing.
Despite the quality of the “acting” from the talking heads telling us their experiences during the day, it was actually quite a believable scenario. On the whole, I’m not a huge fan of this kind of disaster TV. It’s incredibly sensationalist – the sort of thing that you expect to see on Channel 5 after some real disaster somewhere else in the world with a tagline like “It Could Happen Here!”, or on one of those documentary channels you get on Sky.
This being the BBC, however, it was still lowest-common denominator tabloid TV, but it was very well done. To make the drama seem more like a documentary, it was interspersed with footage supposedly from the news reports of that day, each of which featured real news anchors (Jon Snow, Kirsty Wark, some people from Sky News, a plethora of regional BBC presenters) and looked pretty authentic. Even though I knew I was watching a drama, there was still something quite chilling about watching a newsflash where Channel 4’s Jon Snow tells you that he’s just getting reports of two planes colliding over Hounslow. [And much potential for my parents to switch on at the wrong moment, unaware that this was a work of fiction, and misunderstand, War Of The Worlds style.]
They kept saying it as well. Hounslow crash this. Hounslow crash that. [I mean, why does it have to be “The Hounslow Crash”, not “The Heathrow Crash”?] Here’s a picture of the severed BA tail fin on the ground with a BBC News 24 logo on screen and the words “HOUNSLOW PLANE CRASH” in big letters across the bottom.
Scary. But not quite as scary as the fact shown onscreen as the “documentary” ended, about a report published 10 years ago, the conclusions of which are not endorsed by NATS. The report “calculated there would be one collision following a missed approach at Heathrow, on average, every 20 years”. The scary part? That bit of the documentary is actually true.
Popped out at lunchtime to hunt for a birthday present and card for my dad, who’s going to be 60 next week. I wasn’t really expecting to get anywhere with the present, but I thought I might at least manage to pick up a card.
I was wrong. I failed spectacularly. Not only did I fail to get anything for him, I ended up buying one book for myself, I had to stop myself from buying another, and I almost picked up a couple of DVDs as well. I think I’ll try again tomorrow.
Some thoughts for the day.
1. Failing to qualify for Europe is no excuse for taking your website down as soon as the season finishes.
2. It’s not the same without Graham (although Alex is as bored as ever) but it’s still bloody fantastic.
3. Sometimes you just have to do the things that you don’t want to do.
4. I suppose it’s better to do the right thing later rather than never…
5. If 192 is being shut down to be replaced by hundreds of different 6 digit numbers, which number do I call to get the number for directory enquiries?
6. 
Because the world is black and white.
[to be continued…]
Looks like they have Internet access back in Iraq: “Salam Pax” is back online. Well worth a read, now that the attentions of the mass media appear to have turned elsewhere…
Looking forward to this tomorrow night. From the looks of that setlist it will be very Think Tank-centric (playing nearly everything except my current favourite song, Caravan, actually), but should still be an entertaining evening.
Can’t wait.
Excellent. A Gold Sony award for Christian O’Connell. Just about that only thing that gets me out of bed in the mornings…
For about 15 minutes this morning I was wedged into my own little corner of the Northern line somewhere in a tunnel, somewhere outside Clapham North, waiting for the train to move following a “signal failure”. The unpleasantness of being stuck on a packed, hot, smelly train some distance underground was then compounded by the people who tried to get on to the clearly packed train at the next station (that is, when we finally reached it after we moved from our spot in the tunnel) by shouting “could you just move down a bit please?” (Ok mate, explain to me where, exactly, you would like me to move down to in this packed train? Perhaps I should stand on top of the person who is squashed in next to me for your benefit?)
Although I’ve been living in London for nearly 2 1/2 years now, I’ve only recently started commuting across town everyday. Sometimes, during my new journey, I look up from my paper or book and around at all the other people – especially, although not always, my suited companions on the Northern line, all glum faces and attitude, off to their high-flying city jobs – and wonder why we do it. I know it’s not the most original thought in the world, but I not sure I’ve worked out why. I mean, it can’t just be so we can have the means to fill our lives with more and more pointless crap – that bigger television, that new sofa, clothes you don’t need, CDs you’ll never listen to…
Sorry, it’s been a long day and I think I need a beer.
And some sleep.
In an attempt to illustrate the probelm of inappropriate 999 calls, Avon and Somerset police have posted some examples of real 999 calls on their website.
The results are, frankly, astounding. Like the man who calls 999 because his wife has gone out without leaving him any food: “Communications operator: ‘I’m sorry but I really can’t take this. It’s not an emergency because your wife won’t give you anything to eat.'”, or the woman who calls because she can’t find her glasses: “the ones for my nearsight… And I’m trying to get my lunch and I can’t see to do my potatoes very well.”.